The Stanley P. Hayes Center, an Applied Research Center jointly administered between scientists at JISAO of the University of Washington and the NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, was initiated in 1994 and had its first full year of funding and activity in 1995. It is funded jointly by the Climate Diagnostics and Experimental Prediction program of NOAA/OGP and by NOAA/OAR. In 1997, the Hayes Center expanded its activity to include the Pacific Northwest Climate Impacts Group headed by Prof. Ed Miles and thereby added an assessment and policy function with which the physical climate aspects of the Hayes Center could mutually interact.

The original purpose of the Center was to analyze and model Pacific observations, especially those connected with the TOGA TAO Array in the equatorial Pacific. With the addition of the PNW Climate Impacts Group, the Hayes Center achieves an end-to-end aspect---from data to predictions, to assessment, to applications---that broadens the scope of the Hayes Center and connects it with ongoing regional assessment activities in the US. The new goal of the Hayes Center is therefore: to engage, insofar as possible, in end-to-end activities with a view towards understanding the advantages and difficulties inherent in the end-to-end process. A secondary purpose of the Hayes Center is to provide the directed research support for various NOAA programs (especially PACS and other US contributions to CLIVAR-GOALS and CLIVAR-DecCen and to the IPCC); for the maintenance of the TOGA TAO Array; and for the support of seasonal-to-interannual prediction and its relationship to the newly formed IRI, and to support the National Assessment.

The directed research of the Hayes Center can be viewed as consisting of four components:

• applied research and service in support of the U.S. effort to observe and predict climate variations on seasonal-to-interannual time scales;
• diagnostic studies of seasonal-to-interannual variability based on observational data, in particular the TAO Array;
• modeling of the coupled atmosphere/ocean system; and
• understanding and predicting the impacts of seasonal-to-interannual and decadal variability and human-induced climate change on the ecosystems and social and economic systems of the Pacific Northwest.

The Hayes Center participating senior scientists at UW are David Battisti, Edward Sarachik, Bradley Smull, and Mike Wallace, Research Assistant Professor Igor Kamenkovich, Data Manager Todd Mitchell, with the participation of associated postdoctoral researchers and graduate students. At PMEL the senior scientists are D. Edmund Harrison, Billy Kessler, and Michael McPhaden with associated researcher Meghan Cronin and associated graduate students and professional staff. E. Sarachik serves as director of the Hayes Center. The participating scientists at the PNW Climate Impacts Group are David Fluharty (Fisheries), Robert Francis (Fisheries), Jerrold Franklin (Forestry), Anne Marie Kimball (Human Health), Dennis Lettenmaier (Hydrology), Nathan Mantua, and Philip Mote (Physical Climate), with Edward Miles (Marine Policy) serving as Head, and associated postdoctoral researchers and graduate students.